Patient With Monkey Virus Returns For Hospital Care

PENSACOLA — A man who contracted a monkey virus has returned to the hospital for treatment and observation, health officials said Friday.

Homer Bentley, a supervisor of animal handlers at the Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory at the Naval Air Station, was admitted Sunday to the Naval Hospital in Pensacola.

Ensign Doug Zaren said Bentley was admitted for follow-up care based on a culture that had tested positive for Simian B disease -- or Herpes B virus. Bentley, however, is showing no signs of the virus.

Bentley had been released from the hospital last month. He is one of four people who have contracted the virus, which is common in monkeys but rarely transmitted to humans.

Two other workers at the lab, Steve Woodson, 37, of Gulf Breeze, and Larry Smith, 31, of Pensacola, were hospitalized after they were bitten or scratched in March by one of the 600 monkeys at the lab.

Woodson died April 28. Smith is in a coma. Woodson's wife, Cindy, was hospitalized after treating her husband's wound. She has shown no symptoms of encephalitis, the inflammation of the brain that results from the virus.

Dr. Michael Wilder, an epidemiologist with the state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, said about 130 people have been checked to see if they had contracted the virus. Only the Woodsons, Smith and Bentley tested positive, he said.